She wasn't talking to me

Kelly Wickham — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:32:36 -0500

Last night I watched the RNC and the previous week I watched the
DNC. Both times I asked my children to watch along with me and yet it
was last night’s speech by Sarah Palin that made me ill. There’s no
bone in my body that wants to beat up on a woman so I should plainly
state that McCain isn’t off limits either. What is off limits is poking
fun at Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter no matter how many times she
trots her out there as a show pony. There is something very bizarre to
me about how when teen couples decide to marry after getting pregnant
it all somehow becomes OK in everyone’s eyes. That’s a story for
another day and a post about religion (which I also steer clear of for
good reason).

While I don’t give much credence to people who can read a teleprompter or pronounce nuclear correctly because it was phonetically spelled out for them or even for people who feel they must rid libraries of books, I have to state here that neither McCain nor Palin speak for me. They don’t even KNOW me.

What I heard last night in her beauty pageant comedy show was a
person who didn’t take seriously any of the things that affect me.

I don’t know what a snow machine is. She clearly wasn’t talking to me.

I don’t know anyone who plays hockey. Do hockey moms somehow replace
soccer moms? At last night’s high school soccer game that I had to
attend as an administrator, I saw a sea of faces that crossed cultural
lines. In my experience, white wealthy kids get to play hockey. She wasn’t talking to me.

She scoffed at Obama’s community organizing and pushed for her own
small town agenda. You know what I heard in that thinly veiled line?
Her lack of experience with people of color and the power of community
organization. She doesn’t know cities or poverty that way or even what
that does for education. She is keeping that dividing line bold and
prominent by letting me see what she thinks about that: small town =
hard-working white farming families vs. city/community = blacks and
latinos and asians and other people she knows nothing about. She so wasn’t talking to me.

It’s clear that policy was not on her agenda. Nothing was said about
education or health care or even the racial issues we have in this
country. She’s not ready to tackle it and neither is McCain because,
and yes I’ll say it, THEY HAVE NO EXPERIENCE WITH IT. They’ve run from
it or lived in their hermetically sealed worlds without having to deal
with that nastiness. Even if she had mentioned education, my
stronghold, my brain would have exploded anyway. It’s probably best
that she didn’t.

I thought that maybe she’d capture me with her lipstick joke, but
I’m still not certain if the hockey mom or the pit bull wears it.
That’s how little I know about hockey moms.

But I do know bullshit rhetoric when I hear it. That performance
last night at least let me know where she’s coming from and I don’t
want any part of it.

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She wasn't talking to me